At this period Bastien-Lepage had already begun to incur the first
attacks of the disease which was destined so soon to end his days. He
suffered violent pains in the kidneys. He became melancholy, nervous,
irritable; he shut himself up in his studio in the Rue Legendre, and
even his best friends could not gain admittance. The doctors who were
called in recognized the gravity of his illness and ordered energetic
treatment and a change of air. The poor artist reconciled himself to go
for a time to Brittany, and his choice fell on Concarneau. The keen sea
air produced a temporary betterment, and he took advantage of it to
work, for he could not resign himself to lay aside his palette and
brushes. He spent entire days in a boat and, in spite of his sufferings,
executed several landscapes of rare beauty. But his condition, instead
of improving, took a turn for the worse. "The digestive tube," he wrote
to Theuriet, "is always kicking up a row!" The pain in the kidneys and
bowels became at this time so violent that he was forced to decide to
return to Paris, in order to consult the men of science once again.
This time, when Dr. Potain examined him, he could no longer deceive
himself as to the artist's fate; he saw that his patient was
irremediably condemned. However, a sojourn in a milder climate might
prolong his life for a few months; so he advised Algeria. The prospect
of the journey, the desire to make the acquaintance of this land of
sunshine which Delacroix, Decamps, and Fromentin had taught him to love,
for a few days gave a false strength to the poor sufferer, which
produced a deceptive appearance of renewed health and even deceived the
artist himself. Besides, Mme. Bastien-Lepage, the "good little mother,"
was to accompany him, and this unselfish and tender devotion warmed his
heart. The poor woman forced back her tears in order to smile upon the
unfortunate son whom she knew to be doomed. And so the pitiful pair set
forth for the land of sunshine, she consumed with grief, and he almost
joyous in the hope of a speedy cure.
His first letters to his friends bore the imprint of good spirits;
Algeria aroused his enthusiasm by its clear and vibrant colours; his
disease declared a brief truce and he began to form projects. The
thought of dying had not yet even vaguely occurred to him, though, for
that matter, he had no fear of death. The previous year he had painted
_Gambetta on his Death-bed_; and his frequent visits to Ville-d'Avray
led him to discuss the inevitable end of life. "I am not afraid of
death," he said, "dying is nothing,--the important thing is to survive
oneself, and who can be sure of establishing a claim upon posterity? But
there! I am talking nonsense! So long as our work is true, nothing else
matters."
But before long the ravages of the disease began to make headway; the
kidneys no longer performed their function, and he suffered atrocious
agonies which stretched him for days at a time on his back. Even the
burning heat of the African sun no longer had strength enough to animate
his shattered physique; the brush, which the artist from time to time
still attempted to take up, fell from between his fingers. He,
Bastien-Lepage, painter of the soil, found himself unable to
transfer to canvas the enchantment of that land of fairy tale! And
he poured forth his distress in long and poignant letters, in which
could be read in every line the loss of hope and the sure prevision of
the now inevitable end.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE ARTIST'S UNCLE
(Museum at Verdun)
Here is still another kindly and vigorous face from Lorraine, forcefully
modelled, with salient jaw bones, betraying the obstinacy of the race.
An air of good nature softens the energy of this face, and the eyes
sparkle with intelligence. This portrait is treated in a free-handed
manner, with unfaltering strokes, and its colouring is especially
excellent.]
As no amelioration took place, Bastien-Lepage made the return journey to
Paris towards the end of May, 1884. He went back to his studio in the
Rue Legendre, where he had formerly passed such happy hours in the full
enjoyment of a talent at its zenith and a constitution apparently able
to defy all tests. Now, however, he dragged around a dying body, with
disease gnawing at his vitals. He could no longer sleep without the aid
of powerful doses of morphine. The winter-time increased his suffering;
his strength rapidly failed him; and, on the tenth of December, at six
o'clock in the evening, he drew his last breath, at the age of
thirty-six years.
As long as he could hold a brush, Bastien-Lepage continued to work, in
spite of the sufferings which racked him. During the year preceding his
death, while he was already experiencing frightful tortures, he painted
_The Woman making Lye_ and _The Little Chimney-sweep_, the latter of
which is here reproduced. This admirable canvas is to be seen now at the
studio of the painter's brother at Neuilly, and forms part of the legacy
which M. Emile Bastien-Lepage intends to bequeath to the Louvre. It has
never been shown at any Salon, and for that matter there are a good many
other paintings and portraits which have never been exhibited in public
and which are not for that reason any the less remarkable. We may cite
at random: _The Portrait of M. E. Bastien-Lepage_, _The Prince of
Wales_, _Mme. Juliette Drouet_, _A Little Girl going to School_, _The
Little Pedler asleep_, _The Vintage_, _No Help! The Thames at London,
etc._
The very year of his death, shortly before his departure for Algeria,
Bastien-Lepage executed a delicious little canvas entitled _The Forge_,
in which the artist expended a surprising amount of talent and skill,
and which enables us to realize what extraordinary heights his ever
progressive genius might have attained, but for the blind and brutal
cruelty of Destiny.
His death was a time of mourning for the arts; the regrets which he left
behind him were unanimous. Even those who had been opposed to his
aesthetic creed paid homage to his great conscientiousness as an artist
and his noble character as a man.
During March and April, 1885, only a few months after his death, all
literary and artistic Paris flocked to the Hotel de Chimay, an adjunct
to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where a posthumous exhibition of his works
had been organized.
At this exhibition the entire body of his works had been brought
together. The museums had loaned the canvases which they possessed and
the private collectors had done their share towards the glorification of
the artist by entrusting to the organizers a goodly number of paintings
and portraits which had never figured in any of the Salons.
Thus it was made possible to comprehend at a single glance the life-work
of this remarkable artist and to appreciate the distance he had
traversed, the progress he had made during his brief existence, and the
brilliant prospects that were destroyed by his untimely death.
From all these numerous works, exhibited side by side, what stood out
most clearly was the unity of thought which had conceived them and the
dogged fidelity to principles which had controlled their execution. At
the same time they revealed the amazing adaptability of his talent,
which essayed the most diverse and conflicting subjects with the same
realistic vigour, bestowing even upon his vaporous and delicate
portraits of women a touch which, while light, is unmistakably his own,
and in which we recognize that noble, conscientious workmanship, free
from all artifice, which was the distinctive hall-mark both of his
painting and of his character.
But the quality which dominates all the rest in the work of
Bastien-Lepage, and which emanates from it like the fragrance which is
exhaled by certain precious essences, is his ardent and deep-rooted love
for his native soil. This form of local patriotism, determined by the
boundaries of Lorraine, underwent a noble expansion to the point of
encircling the entire earth; for while the painter chose his models out
of the familiar landscape of his childhood's home, his observation and
his art broke out of the bounds of this special setting and embraced
rustic humanity throughout France and even beyond. His peasants are
unmistakably from the banks of the Meuse in type and in customs, but
they are from the world at large in gesture and in philosophy of life.
Whether he comes from the North or from the South, the tiller of the
soil wages the same conflict with ungrateful furrows, the spade and the
plough imprint the same calluses on his bony hands, the sun browns his
energetic and stubborn features to the same deep tan. It is in this
respect that the art of Bastien-Lepage assumes a higher significance;
like Millet, it is not a peasant whom he paints, but the peasant,
forever unchanging in spite of latitude. But if his work has attained
this higher eminence of generalization, it is precisely for the reason
that the artist's watchful eye has succeeded in discovering, in the life
of the peasantry, that state of mind which is common to them all, that
immutable gesture which they have always made and always will make. He
has understood and translated with inspired eloquence their rugged
strength, their naive awkwardness, their simple intelligence.
Another glorious distinction of Bastien-Lepage was that he loved the
fields as well as he loved the peasants. Not fields drowned beneath
melancholy shadow and pallid shifting light, but fields bathed in
sunshine, until the golden tassels of the grain crackle like sparks
under the fire of the midday sun. Always and everywhere he sought for
light, and in the midst of it his modest protagonists of rustic life
stand out in all their vigour.
It would be easy to cite, among our best contemporary painters, a
considerable number of artists who are brilliantly continuing the
tradition left by Bastien-Lepage and emulating his predilection for the
luminous brilliance of the open air. How often, in the presence of a
canvas by Lhermitte, our thoughts go back to the painter of Lorraine,
whose vigorous execution and joyous colouring seem to have been
reincarnated! Art is indebted to Bastien-Lepage for having reinstated
nature in all her literal truth by proving that, in order to be
beautiful, she has no need of artificial and superfluous adornment.
Lorraine, out of gratitude, wished to perpetuate the memory of this
glorious son of the Meuse, who had so eloquently celebrated the vitality
and poetry of his natal earth. It was at Damvillers itself that it was
decided to raise a monument to the great painter; and around its
pedestal there were gathered the "good little mother," all in tears, the
assembled population of the village and the whole region round about,
and even the Government took part in the pious ceremony by sending as
its representative M. Gustave Larroumet, director of the Beaux-Arts.
This eloquent art critic brought as a tribute to the departed painter
the official seal of immortality, and he pronounced it in terms vibrant
with emotion.
"At the moment," he said, "when ordinarily the best of artists have done
no more than to give indications of their originality and when ripening
years alone begin to keep the promises of youth, Jules Bastien-Lepage
died, leaving masterpieces behind him, besides having liberated an
artistic formula from the tendencies and exaggerations which hampered
it, and indicated to the art of painting a new pathway along which his
young heirs are advancing with an assured step. He loved nature and
truth; he loved his own people, and no one ever lived who was surrounded
with a greater degree of affection; he inspired faithful friendships
which he himself enjoyed to the full; and those whom he left behind
soothe their heart-ache with the balm of tender memories; he practised
his art without ever making sacrifice to passing fashion or sordid
profit; there was no place in his mind or in his heart for any other
than noble and generous thoughts. Let us comfort ourselves, therefore,
for what his death has taken from us by the thought of what his life has
left to us, and let us assign him his place in the ranks of the younger
master painters who have been mown down in full flower, close beside
that of Gericault and of Henri Regnault."
In his admirable biographic and critical study of Bastien-Lepage, whose
personal friend he had been, M. L. de Fourcaud, by way of conclusion,
bids him this touching farewell:
"Poor Bastien-Lepage, snatched away one winter's night, at thirty-six
years of age, in the fairest flowering of his bright promise, in the
richest expansion of his personality; may each returning month of May
bring at least an abundance of blossoms to the apple tree beside his
grave! For the blossoms of the apple were always, in his eyes, so fair a
sight!"
To-day he sleeps forever in a corner of that Lorraine land which he
loved so dearly, and perhaps in the cemetery of his native village his
shade can still hear the familiar accents of his native dialect. The
great painter of Lorraine could never have slept his eternal sleep in
any other soil than that.
Painter of flowers, painter of nature, painter of the earth which is
forever deathless and forever renewed, Bastien-Lepage has chosen that
better part; his work will live as long as these, his models, and will
go down through the centuries in all the splendour of increasing beauty
and eternal youth.
Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors have been corrected as
follows: